West Virginia justifies in every way its nickname, the Mountain State. With an average elevation of about 1,500 feet (460 metres) above sea level, it is the highest of any U.S. state east of the Mississippi River. It is a region tied economically and socially to the mountain spines that span its length and breadth and to the rivers that enclose it on many sides. Originally it constituted the northwestern portion of Virginia, but its inhabitants defied the state’s secession convention in 1861, choosing instead to remain within the union. Two years later the area formed a new state, its citizenry acting much in the tradition suggested by the motto of West Virginia, “Montani semper liberi” (“Mountaineers are always free”).

In comparison with the national standards and averages of the United States, West Virginia is poor in personal incomes and in overall economic development. For decades the rich coal beds underlying West Virginia have made it a leading producer of bituminous coal in North America. The gnarled terrain long locked West Virginians into their small communities in the narrow valleys and posed both literal and symbolic obstacles to people from the outside world. Since World War II large numbers of the state’s population have left West Virginia for places offering greater employment opportunities. The 1970s marked a brief turning point in out-migration during that decade’s energy crisis and accompanying coal boom. Beginning in the 1980s, population loss from the coalfields and heavy manufacturing was partially offset by an influx of urban professionals and retirees in the eastern panhandle. West Virginians have turned to the development of education and telecommunications, among other strategies, to create a more modern social and economic climate in their state. Area 24,230 square miles (62,756 square km). Population (2010) 1,852,994; (2016 est.) 1,831,102.

Land

Relief

The maximum elevation in West Virginia is 4,863 feet (1,482 metres) at Spruce Knob, in the east. The lowest point is 247 feet (75 metres) at Harpers Ferry, located on a steep tongue of land rising above the confluence of the Shenandoah and Potomac rivers. The land is rugged, ranging from hilly to mountainous, and there are no extensive expanses of level land. The state has two panhandles, one knifing northward between Pennsylvania and Ohio, the other eastward between Maryland and Virginia.

Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

The Upper South.

Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

View from the summit of Spruce Knob, Allegheny Mountains, eastern West Virginia.

All of West Virginia is a part of the Appalachian Mountain system. It is commonly subdivided into two major physiographic regions: the Appalachian Plateau Province and the Ridge and Valley Province. In general, these are separated by the Allegheny Front, dividing the waters that flow to the Atlantic Ocean from those flowing to the Gulf of Mexico. The Appalachian Plateau Province covers the western two-thirds of the state and coincides with the Ohio Riverdrainage basin. It is a region severely dissected by streams into a maze of hills and valleys, and, in places, the original plateau surface shows as the uniform top levels of the remaining ranges. The eastern portion of the plateau, with the highest mountains of the state, is referred to as the Allegheny Mountain section. The Allegheny Mountains include more than 40 peaks over 4,000 feet (1,200 metres) in elevation, inducing heavy precipitation in the area and making it the wettest in the state and the source of many of its rivers. The eastern edge of the state and the eastern panhandle comprise the Ridge and Valley Province. This geologic province takes in most of the Potomac River basin and is famous for its northeast-southwest folded mountain alignment, part of the chain reaching from Canada to north-central Alabama. The northern end of the Blue Ridge Mountains forms a minor region in the easternmost end of the eastern panhandle.

Drainage and soils

The drainage east of the Allegheny Front features a trellised pattern flowing toward the northeast and ultimately draining into the Potomac. The western portions drain across an inclined plane by a longer, dendritic drainage pattern that flows generally northwest into the Ohio River. A very small area drains into the eastward-bound James River system of Virginia.

The Ohio River at Parkersburg, W.Va.

WV Department Of Commerce

Drainage over West Virginia’s rugged surface has created some of the state’s most productive and level alluvial soils on the larger river floodplains. The weathered limestone soils of the east are suited for pasture and orchards. Some of the clay soils along the Ohio River are bases for the ceramics industry. In general, however, the high relief and deciduous forest of the Appalachian Plateau Province produce a thin, rocky, acidic soil not conducive to large-scale commercial farming.

Climate

The state has distinct seasons of about equal length. It has a humid continental climate except for a marine modification in the eastern panhandle. Mean annual temperatures, reflecting latitude and elevation, range from about 56 °F (13 °C) in the south to 52 °F (11 °C) in the north and 48 °F (9 °C) in the most mountainous regions. January is the coldest month, with a statewide average of 33 °F (1 °C), and July is warmest, with a 73 °F (23 °C) average. The growing season averages 160 days but ranges from 120 to 180 days. West Virginia lies in the latitude zone of the westerly winds, so most storm tracks, fronts, and wind direction come from the northwest, west, or southwest. Mean annual precipitation varies from more than 60 inches (1,520 mm) in the mountainous areas to 35 inches (890 mm) in the rain shadow just east of the mountains. Snowfall, which makes up some 8 percent of the total precipitation, varies from a seasonal average of less than 20 inches (510 mm) in the southwest to more than 64 inches (1,620 mm) in the eastern mountains.

Plant and animal life

Forests cover more than three-fourths of the state. Accessible virgin forests were harvested about the turn of the 20th century, but successional forests have now been established except in agricultural and urban concentrations. The plateau forests consist of hardwoods of red and white oak, yellow poplar, sugar and red maple, hickory, beech, basswood, black cherry, and yellow birch. Softwoods of loblolly pine, shortleaf and white pine, spruce, and hemlock cover the mountain slopes, deep gorges, and other scattered areas. The eastern section is predominantly an oak and pine woodland. Other species such as sycamores, locusts, chestnuts, elms, and dogwoods are also common.

Rabbits, squirrels, gray foxes, opossums, skunks, raccoon, and groundhogs are common in West Virginia. The larger white-tailed deer found in abundance by the settlers are increasing in number, and black bears are found in the high country. Mountain streams and lake impoundments feature trout, bass, pikes, crappies, walleyes, and muskellunge, while the improving water quality of the larger rivers accommodates increasing numbers of perch, bluegills, catfish, and other species.

People

Population composition

The first pioneer settlement in what became West Virginia was by Germans along the Potomac River at Shepherdstown. The 1790 census reported 55,873 inhabitants in the western portion of Virginia, of whom about 15,000 were of German descent. In the early 1800s many orders of the Virginia government relating to the frontier occupants were printed in both German and English. English descendants dominated the settlement of the Greenbrier, New, Kanawha, and Monongahela valleys, while Scotch-Irish tended to settle in the less accessible areas. Americans of African descent shared in this early heritage, although the number of slaves in western Virginia was limited because the rugged topography curtailed extensive plantation agriculture. Only two counties, Jefferson and Kanawha, ever had more than 2,000 slaves, and in one-third of the counties slaves constituted less than 1 percent of the population. After the American Civil War the development of railroads, mining, and industry attracted blacks from the South as well as numerous labourers from southern and eastern Europe. The contrasting cultural influence of these more recent immigrants is apparent in the industrial northern panhandle and in the towns dominated by coal mining. Like much of Appalachia, West Virginia is predominantly white—more than nine-tenths—with the remaining minority population virtually all African American. There are very small numbers of Hispanics, Asians, Pacific Islanders, and Native Americans.

The Society of Friends (Quaker) and Presbyterian denominations were well established by the 1730s, with Baptists entering Berkeley county in the eastern panhandle in 1743. A Methodist circuit was established in Berkeley and Jefferson counties in 1778. Leading denominations in West Virginia are Methodist, Baptist, and Presbyterian. Roman Catholic and Lutheran adherents were prevalent in the early years of West Virginia, but they were limited primarily to the German settlements. Expansion of these faiths, particularly of Roman Catholicism, occurred with the immigration of Irish, German, Italian, Polish, and Hungarian labourers.

St. Peter’s Roman Catholic Church, Harpers Ferry, W.Va.

WV Department Of Commerce

Settlement patterns

West Virginia ranks among the most rural states in the country, with some two-thirds of its total population living in rural, usually nonfarm, areas or in towns with fewer than 2,500 inhabitants. Broad, level ridgetops and valley bottoms are commonly cleared for agriculture and commercial and residential purposes. The field patterns are usually linear, in conformity with the landscape. Rural dwellings are distributed as ribbons of settlement along the highways or near other transportation systems. Many rural residents commute to urban areas for employment because of the decline in agriculture and the mechanization of mining.

Wheeling, W.Va.

WV Department Of Commerce

Among West Virginia’s larger cities, Huntington, Wheeling, Parkersburg, and Weirton are situated on the Ohio River, where water and rail transport and room for expansion have permitted growth. Most urban development and industrial growth extends along other streams, as in the Kanawha and Monongahela valleys. The larger cities, with their industrial concentrations, their political importance, and their colleges and universities, dominate the state’s activities. County seats of government in the rural regions exert considerable influence over the areas they serve.

Parkersburg, W.Va.

WV Department Of Commerce

Economy

West Virginia has traditionally maintained a poor economic position among the states. A number of factors have prompted out-migration since World War II. In the 1950s and ’60s mine mechanization and declining coal use contributed to a decreasing demand for labour. Rugged land and limited farm size hampered mechanization of agriculture, and the competitive advantage shifted to states with more level and expansive land. Foreign competition in the glass and ceramics industry also reduced economic opportunity. Increasingly, the lack of flat land for industrial and commercial expansion also has hindered development.

Coal-preparation plant, West Virginia.

WV Department Of Commerce

In 1965 the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) was established as part of Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society program. Appalachia was identified as one of the regions in the United States that was severely lagging in economic development. The ARC has provided funds for highway and transportation improvement to rural areas and otherwise has enhanced local infrastructure to attract economic development. Of the 13 states identified as part of Appalachia, only West Virginia is wholly within the region.

During the 1970s the resurgence of coal as a major energy resource and efforts by the ARC to improve social and economic conditions in the region reversed the migration flow. The chemical, steel, and glass industries were modernized, and new high-technology industries were established in the Ohio and Kanawha valleys. These factors brought about migration within the state from poorer agricultural and mining regions to the urban areas, where better employment and educational opportunities existed.

In the 1980s and ’90s, however, numerous jobs in the coal industry were lost, and the cyclic nature of mining created pockets of poverty in the state. Employment also declined in the manufacturing, steel, and chemical-processing industries. These job losses resulted again in an out-migration among the young, with the oldest age groups tending to remain fixed. The state began responding to this in the 1980s by promoting greater economic diversity, notably through the development of a large service sector. Much of this has been undertaken by the West Virginia Development Office and directed by the Council for Community and Economic Development. The development office has emphasized such items as the comparative advantage of the state’s natural resources, its relatively new interstate highway system, and its location within one day’s travel of three-fifths of the U.S. and Canadian population centres. In addition, West Virginia has tended to have a low crime rate relative to other states.

Agriculture and forestry

West Virginia has enormous stands of high-quality hardwood forests. Monongahela National Forest, in the highland region, is one of the largest in the eastern United States. Wisely used, this renewable resource is a safeguard against floods, slope erosion, and air pollution. It is significant to the state’s tourist sector, to the thousands of workers in timber production, and to the manufacturing of finished wood products. In the 1990s additional hardwood processing plants opened, and a greater number of desirable trees were harvested.

The rugged terrain and thin, rocky, acidic soil of the state limit agriculture. Since the 1950s there has been a decline in acreage harvested and in the value of most crops per acre. West Virginia’s total value of agricultural production is quite low relative to the rest of the country. Its mountainous areas specialize in grazing and horticulture. Cattle and dairy products are important in the state. One of the prime apple-growing regions in the country is in the eastern panhandle; however, the area is subject to increasing pressure of suburbanization by the Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, Maryland, metropolitan areas. Broiler, turkey, and egg production are the most valuable agricultural activities.

Resources and power

West Virginia has an abundance and variety of natural resources, although bituminous coal is the most important. The state’s recoverable coal reserves are estimated varyingly at 2 to 50 billion tons, and deposits are located in all but a handful of the counties. Natural gas dominates the state’s west-central portion. Petroleum is extracted in the northern two-thirds of the gas-producing areas. Coal and extensive deposits of rock salt and brine historically have supported a chemical industry. Abundant sand and clay distributions are basic to glass, tile, and brick production. Limestone is common in the eastern quarter.

The development of natural resources has influenced industrial location and greatly affected the economy of certain areas. Industrial cities of the Ohio, Kanawha, and Monongahela valleys are dependent on local coal, limestone, clay, salt, glass sands, oil, and natural gas, as well as on the ready availability of water. All but a small fraction of the electricity generated in West Virginia comes from coal. Since the energy crisis of the 1970s, coal-fired thermal electric power plants have exported energy to expanding areas in neighbouring states.

Industry

West Virginia is one of the premier coal-mining regions in the country and the world. Since the 1970s the annual tonnage produced has increased, although the number employed in the industry has steadily declined. This decline is explained in part by continued mechanization, improved mining techniques and productivity, and the switch from deep to surface mining. Coal mining and mine employment in West Virginia are threatened further on two fronts. The thin layers of coal deposits below the surface of southern West Virginia’s mountains require a type of surface mining, called “mountaintop removal,” that is particularly devastating to the landscape, and environmental laws restrict its expansion. In addition, concerns about air quality—focused on sulfur emissions and, more recently, production of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide—have subdued the demand for the coal mined in the north-central part of the state.

Coal tipple, Ceredo, W.Va.

WV Department Of Commerce

West Virginia’s three other leading industries—chemicals, primary metals, and lumber and wood products—are relatively stable. The glass industry, which utilizes the state’s abundance of silica sand, was established in the Wheeling area as early as the 1830s. Today the state’s glassmakers produce art glass, products for the home, and glass for commercial and industrial uses such as in laboratory equipment and household appliances.

Services, labour, and taxation

In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, West Virginia increasingly moved away from a coal- and industry-based economy to a service economy. Tourism led the way in growth in the service sector. The state improved its telecommunications infrastructure, and numerous telephone and Internet service centres moved to the state, capitalizing on the low rural wage rate and relatively inexpensive land, services, and buildings. For the same reasons, the federal government also moved facilities from the nearby crowded and expensive Washington, D.C., metropolitan area to West Virginia, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s National Crime Information Center in Clarksburg.

West Virginia has a strong tradition of union activity. Among the events in the state that were significant in the history of organizing in the United States was the showdown between management and labour in Matewan, in the southwestern part of the state, in 1920. Coal miners there attempted to unionize; detectives hired by the coal company then sought to evict the miners unlawfully from their company-owned housing, and in the ensuing violence 12 people were killed. In the early 21st century a slightly greater proportion of the state’s employed workers were enrolled in labour unions than the national average.

The West Virginia state government receives about half its revenues from various sales taxes and nearly one-third from individual income taxes. A smaller proportion of revenue comes from corporate income taxes.

Transportation

The larger cities and the state’s perimeters are well served by transportation facilities. The rugged terrain of West Virginia limited early transportation and contributed to isolation and slow economic growth. The landscape is still a formidable obstacle, but good progress has been made. Interstate highways that cross the state have improved internal travel and economic development. Roads of the Appalachian Highway Corridor, a project funded in part by the ARC, have been instrumental in completing the network of other federal and state routes. A major engineering feat was the completion (1977) of the New River Gorge Bridge near Fayetteville; the single-arch steel span, 876 feet (267 metres) above the river, drastically reduced travel time there, as motorists formerly had to make a long detour over mountain roads. The major river systems of the western plateau provide some 450 miles (725 km) of navigable waterway. Although West Virginia has more than two dozen airports, most lack regularly scheduled major carrier service; however, major airlines serve Charleston and Huntington, and commuter lines help fill the void. Railroads, which run primarily east-west, provide coal and freight haulage over nearly 2,500 miles (4,000 km) of line. Amtrak provides passenger rail service through the southern part of the state. Many abandoned railroads have been turned into hiking and biking trails in keeping with the growth in tourist activity.

Government and society

Constitutional framework

West Virginia’s present constitution dates from 1872, but it has been amended many times. The governor is head of the executive branch and is assisted by a secretary of state, auditor, treasurer, attorney general, and agriculture commissioner (each elected to a four-year term), in addition to a superintendent of schools appointed by the West Virginia Board of Education. The bicameral legislature consists of the Senate and the House of Delegates. Two state senators are elected from each of the 17 senatorial districts; their four-year terms are arranged so that one in each district must stand for reelection every two years. The House of Delegates is composed of 100 members, each serving a two-year term. Their representation is apportioned over more than 50 voting districts on the basis of population. The legislature meets annually for 60 days, but the governor is empowered to convene special sessions. At the head of the judicial branch is the Supreme Court of Appeals, consisting of five judges elected to 12-year terms. The heavily burdened 31 circuit courts try the major cases. Magistrate courts serve at the county level, and municipal courts are provided for in incorporated areas. West Virginia also has a family and magistrate court system that handles cases related to divorce, annulment, child support, paternity, and other domestic issues.

Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

West Virginia State Capitol building, on the Kanawha River, Charleston.

The Department of Military Affairs and Public Safety coordinates the state’s National Guard and veterans’ affairs, presides over the state police, correctional facilities, and other state-level law enforcement services, and administers homeland-security and emergency-management programs. County law enforcement is handled by a sheriff, sheriff’s deputies, and a prosecuting attorney working with county and municipal police. Under the state constitution, three commissioners (who are elected for six-year terms) govern each county. Other elected county officials are sheriff, prosecuting attorney, assessor, members of the county’s board of education, and surveyor. Some towns have a mayor-council form of government, others a council-manager form. All officials except city managers are elected.

Health and welfare

The state Department of Health and Human Resources has responsibilities ranging from collecting statistics on various diseases and health care issues to overseeing all matters relating to public health and medical facilities. County and municipal boards of health assist at the local level. The state also oversees public assistance programs in such areas as child welfare, distribution of commodities and food stamps, and matters regarding old age, blindness, dependent children, disability, and general relief. There are hospitals for the mentally ill and numerous programs for mentally handicapped children and adults. Notable health care facilities are found at Marshall University and West Virginia University, and West Virginia University also has a children’s hospital and numerous other specialized clinics.

Education

The public school system, directed by the West Virginia Board of Education, is under a county-unit plan allowing local supervision under county boards. The state-controlled system of higher education includes West Virginia University (1867) at Morgantown, Marshall University (1837) at Huntington, and West Virginia State University (1891), a historically black university located in Institute. There are, in addition, several state colleges, community colleges, specialized technical institutions, and a number of private and sectarian colleges. The Division of Technical and Adult Education Services, part of the state’s Department of Education, provides an important educational supplement with courses in agriculture, home economics, practical nursing, and technical, industrial, and distributive skills.

West Virginia State University, Institute, W.Va.

WV Department Of Commerce

The National Radio Astronomy Observatory has an educational and research facility at Green Bank that is open to visitors. A national centre for the reception and study of radio waves that come from distant stars and galaxies, the Green Bank facility has a large, fully steerable radio telescope. The observatory was placed in West Virginia because of its rural location, and the area around Green Bank is part of the National Radio Quiet Zone. In addition, one of the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratories is located in Morgantown.

Britannica Web sites

The U.S. state of West Virginia was created during the American Civil War. In 1861 the state of Virginia voted to withdraw from the Union. But leaders from the state’s northwestern counties rebelled and set up their own government. This division of Virginia lasted until June 20, 1863, when West Virginia became the 35th state of the Union.

The U.S. state of West Virginia was created during the American Civil War. Before then the area had been known only as the western part of Virginia. From the time that Virginia became the 10th state in the Union, in 1788, up to the beginning of the war, in 1861, the ideological division between the two regions became as well defined and as impenetrable as the mountains that separated them.

Article Contributors

Article History

Feedback

Corrections? Updates? Help us improve this article!Contact our editors with your feedback.